The First Step
by NewHampshireGirl
Summary: "What's important is that we get you out of this apartment and...and functioning again." "Saying I'm dysfunctional McGee?"


**A/N:** This came to me based on a few spoilers that have been leaked about Season 11. It's not majorly spoiler, just something that I envisioned happening between Tony and Tim. Could be cannon, could be AU based on what the writers of the show actually give us. I have decided to leave what exactly happened between Tony and Ziva a bit of a mystery. This is just a Tony/McGee buddy fic because I love their friendship on the show. Also, I hope I stayed as true to the characters as possible.

**Disclaimers:** I do not own NCIS, CBS, or the characters. So, I'm making no profit from this. Purely written for entertainment.

**Warnings:** Minor spoilers for the end of Season 10, beginning of Season 11

* * *

**The First Step**

Timothy McGee could not believe he was about to do this, but he steeled himself and banged on his partner's door—loudly.

It had been four days since anyone had spoken to Tony DiNozzo. He was ignoring cell phone calls, landline calls and emails. Effectively the federal agent had shut himself up in his apartment and off from the world. Abby was in tears most of the time, Gibbs snarled at McGee at every opportunity he got. The poor green agent that had been assigned to the now empty desk had only lasted a day before she ran from the building in hysterics herself.

Everything had fallen apart four days ago. And he wasn't even embellishing like Tony. Ziva's abrupt departure had thrown them all into a topsy-turvy, spiral, where some of them were fairing better than others.

"Come on, DiNozzo, I know you're in there!" Tim hissed. "Abby traced your cell."

Slowly the door to the apartment opened and all fight left Tim as a hallow look peered back at him from heavy lidded hazel eyes. It appeared Tony had not shaved—or showered for the matter—in a week. An unkempt beard covered his face, his skin, which usually had a healthy tan to it, was a gray pallor, and his breath reeked of stale beer and whiskey. "Tony?" He gasped, pale green eyes widening. "What the hell?"

"Oh, nice to see you too, McGee" Tony snapped but there was no bite behind it.

Tim realized he was looking at a man that was defeated. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Tony quite like this. Not even after the break-up with Jeanne had the man gone on what was most appropriately deemed a bender. Tony was warped into a man that Tim didn't even know anymore. "Listen, I'm sorry. That came out wrong. But your appearance…it's not what I'm used too and we've been worried about you since we got the news that Ziva was leaving. Ducky said you needed your space. But Abby wanted to storm the gates—this was the compromise."

Tony grunted a response and threw open the door, allowing Tim access to his domain. The usually neat and orderly apartment was in disarray. Dirty clothes were tossed everywhere, pizza boxes towered on the dining room table, and beer bottles accented as many empty surfaces as possible. Ironically the only thing that could be considered _clean _was the goldfish bowl. Kate the goldfish happily swam around her bowl, in pristine water, and Tim realized that there was a sliver of hope that deep down Tony was still Tony—he still cared about something.

For a moment Tim watched as Tony plopped back down onto his sofa, eyes focused on the screen on some movie that the younger man had no idea about. There was a bottle of Jack Daniels on the coffee table and he winced at the implications of that. His partner had moved on from beer to the heavy stuff. He supposed that all men had a breaking point—he just never believed Tony DiNozzo was amongst them. Abby had once said that he was a solid rock. It took a lot to chip him and everything just rolled off of him and he kept going.

But was that a fair description? Tony was, despite the juvenile nature, very complex.

"So, um, Abby and I were wondering if you'd meet us for drinks later," Tim ventured.

Tony reached for his bottle of whiskey and took a swig. "Got plenty of drinks here."

Tim winced. That had been a dumb question. It was obvious that Tony had been drinking since he'd come back from tracking down Ziva. He knew it was none of his business but he desperately wanted to know what she had said to Tony to shove him on this self-destructive path. "We can do pizza and a movie. Or Chinese. It's been awhile since we all hung out. And I think…I think we all need it."

His partner shrugged his shoulders. "Don't feel like hanging out, Probie. You and Abby go and have a great time though. Suppose she's upset."

"Well, yeah, I mean she had to deal with us all resigning and we're not exactly coming back whole, are we?"

"Nope. We're not."

"Listen, if you need to talk about it."

Tony glared at him and Tim backed down. There was a dangerous look in the senior field agent's eyes and Tim was not in the mood to explore it. After all, Abby had requested that he get Tony to come out of his apartment for a few hours, not make matters worse.

Tim looked around the room, listening to the old movie playing in the background. "We can go bowling. Sister Rosita and the nuns bowl tonight. They'd love to have us."

"Sorry, but no thanks. My back hurts."

"Come on, are you going to hole yourself up here for the rest of your life?" Tim sputtered. "It's not the first time changes to our team have been made. You once told me that you suffered through a rotation of agents and then as a two-man team with Gibbs before Kate joined. We'll get through this. It's not reason to drink. We survived Kate's death, we can survive this, Tony."

"This is different," Tony mumbled.

"Of course it's different. It's better, right? I mean, Ziva isn't dead. It's not like she can't come back and visit us."

"She won't."

He was a little tongued tied. "You psychic now?"

Tony shook his head, another swallow of whiskey. "Nope. She made it clear that she needed a clean break. If she comes back, it won't be any time soon. Tell Abby she can stop emailing and begging Ziva."

"How...never mind, it's not important that you knew this," Tim said, putting his hands up in surrender. "What's important is that we get you out of this apartment and...and functioning again."

"Saying I'm dysfunctional McGee?"

Tim's mouth hung open for a moment. "Well! Look at you!" he gestured to Tony's bum like appearance. He really didn't know what else to say. It was the last card he could possibly think to play at this point.

Tony quirked an eyebrow and swirled the amber liquid around in the Jack Daniels bottle. "Guess I have let myself go."

"You guess?"

"Alright I have. Just a little."

"Just a little?" Tim spat, the pitch of his voice raising. _God, I need a mirror so he can see. _

His partner didn't offer any counter argument to that and leaned back into the cushions, watching the movie on his plasma television screen. He was really starting to worry Tim. Had Tony been this messed up after Kate died? Tim couldn't recall but at the time he was still fairly new to NCIS and had easily accepted whatever Tony told him. He should have known that Tony did not cope with Kate's death by eating junk food. Tim rubbed his temple for a moment. "Come on, Tony. You need to get out. Hiding away here isn't doing you any good."

Tony threw his head back and took another long swig of the whiskey. Wiping his mouth clean of the alcohol with his sleeve, he narrowed his eyes at Tim. "I know what I need—to be left alone. I'm not going to bounce back like you or Abby or Jimmy. I'm not going to let this roll off my shoulder like Gibbs or Ducky. Because it's different this time. This isn't just a partner leaving. She meant more to me than a partner, than a friend. And forgive me, if I feel like drowning my sorrows in alcohol and old movies."

Suddenly the gravity of his words hit Tim full bore in the chest. He saw the pain, the betrayal and the longing in his partner's eyes. He'd been turning a blind eye now for years. Sure, he'd always known that Tony and Ziva's relationship was different, he just didn't think-or refused to believe-Tony had actually fallen in love with her. _Lord does he have a way of falling in love with the wrong woman, _Tim thought as he found the easy chair and sat down. "She was Mossad, Tony. You didn't actually think…it was every going to work out in the end, did you?"

"Not when she was officially with Mossad, no," Tony muttered, closing his eyes tightly, "but she left them, to join us because…foolishly I thought it was because she wanted to start anew."

"And you thought, someday, it would work."

"Yeah. Should have known it wasn't going to end any other way. Once Mossad, always Mossad, eh?" Tony spat, bitterly. Another swig of whiskey. "Just another notch on my stupid things I've done belt."

Tim shook his head. "It wasn't stupid, Tony. We can't always control who we fall in love with."

Tony peered at him, thoughtfully. "Look at you, McRomeo. I take it that fair Delilah is treating you well."

"Don't change the subject—this is about you," Tim admonished him. "And besides, you'll bounce back—you always do."

"No, I don't just bounce back. I'm not a rubber ball."

"I don't understand."

Slowly Tony let out a breath, and looked right at Tim. "After Wendy left, I didn't eat for weeks. Gibbs almost literally had to shove food down my throat, pick me up and dust me off," Tony mused. "It was _years _before I actually went on a date again. Just around the time we met you I think. Oh, don't look _that _surprised. You've known for a while now that most of the time the women are just apart of the act."

Tim had to admit there were times he was certain that Tony's stories of his dates and his little black book were just that—stories. But hearing first hand affirmation of that shocked him. "And after Jeanne?"

Tony shrugged. "Pretty much the same, except for Gibbs picking me up and dusting me off. I kept the pain private, made it look like that I really had been acting and that I never did love her. Truth was, I loved her—a lot. If we had met under different circumstances, say, where she knew the _real _me, I might have ended up making a life with her."

"EJ?"

"It hurt that she didn't trust me. Ran from me all the time. But I couldn't let people see how much it hurt. Have a reputation to maintain after all, McGee."

"Tony…why didn't you…God, we would have helped you."

Silence fell between them for a moment, before the SFA put the bottle of whiskey down and looked at his partner, sternly. "You already don't think very highly of me, McGee. I didn't want to give you anymore ammunition to use against me if you saw how weak I'd become."

Tim looked away, embarrassed. It was true. He wasn't always nice to Tony but somewhere throughout their eleven years of working together, the man's goofy charm had grown on him. It was true that at times Tony annoyed the hell out of him, but as of late, he was finding that he really missed the oddball joke or movie reference just to break the tension. "Yeah. Guess I owe you an apology."

Tony shook his head. "No. You don't. I didn't make it easy for you."

"I'll say," Tim mumbled. He heard Tony chuckle for the first time since arriving.

Again they fell into silence, the only sound in the apartment that of the old movie playing on the television, and then the clunk of the Jack Daniels bottle as it was set down onto the coffee table. Tim watched as Tony rubbed his hands over his scraggly face. "What am I doing, McGee?"

Tim cocked an eyebrow in curiosity. "You mean besides locking yourself away, drinking at all hours of the day and watching old Cary Grant movies?"

Tony smiled, sadly. "Impressive, McGee. Didn't know you were familiar with Cary Grant."

"Well, Ducky says you fancy you self the modern day Cary Grant with your dress," Tim replied with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But back to the point, since your ADD has sent us off track again. What do you mean, what are you doing?"

"I'm sitting here wallowing over a woman that I was never in a relationship with."

"Come on. Not the first time a guy has wallowed over a woman that wasn't his."

Tony grunted, lowly. "Don't try to make me feel better, because this is how I end up—again and again. In the movies it's the pretty girl crying over the jock breaking her heart. My life—it's my heart that's been broken over and over. Wendy, Jeanne, EJ—Ziva—they all left _me._"

Tim absorbed that bit of information. "Come on, you must have ended a relationship before."

"I've ended a lot of one night stands and long weekends, relationships that really do not qualify as one."

"I could drop a horrible cliché here and say, _everything happens for a reason._"

Tony shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. "Horribly cliché. Not sure the reason why my heart being broken over and over again is. Guess I should just come to terms with the fact that I'm probably going to be alone the rest of my life. I'm married to the job."

Tim didn't know why but his partner's declaration of damning himself to solo life, stung. Tony didn't deserve all that had been thrown at him over the years and as he sat there with him, Tim was beginning to wonder why the mental breakdown had taken so long to grasp him. Of course, maybe it was always that the thought that someday Ziva would feel the same way about Tony and everything was going to work out that they would get their happy ending. Who knew that the womanizing, play boy, Anthony DiNozzo was really a hopeless romantic at heart? "You just haven't met the right girl yet."

"Ya think, Probie?"

"Listen. If it's going to happen maybe you shouldn't be _looking _for it."

"Wasn't _looking _for it when I fell for Ziva."

Tim rubbed his temple. They could easily go around in circles for hours. Tony was good at that. "You said Ziva was different. She was different because she was your partner for eight years. You survived all different kinds of hell with her. There's a small possibly that you love her but you're not _in love _with her."

Tony reached for the bottle of Jack and took a long sip. "You're not making any sense, ."

"Hear me out."

"Fine."

Tim took a deep breath. "If you were in love with her you would have stormed off that plane in Israel and told her. If you were in love with her you would have stopped her from going on that suicide mission to Somalia. If you were _in love _with her you wouldn't have waited for Gibbs silent signal to go after her when she stormed out of the cabin in May. If you were in love with her you never would have let the relationship with Ray get that close to marriage and that was only stopped because the guy killed someone."

Tony looked away, briefly. "You forget I went to Africa to avenge her death, I disregarded protocol to protect her when Rivkin was in town, and I spent all those hours trying to track down those damn opera tickets but had to settle for a recording. Does someone who isn't in love do that?"

"You did all those things because you _care _about her. You didn't want her to lose her job when Rivkin was compromising her, we _both _went to Somalia to avenge her death, and we both know how much honoring Tali means to her. You leave Nutter Butters on my desk all the time, bring me coffee late at night and Chinese food. Abby gets roses and cupcakes on her birthday, and whenever she's down, I can usually find her here, curled up on your sofa with you watching a movie—does that mean you're in love with us too?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Probie. I do that because I care about you guys."

Suddenly a look of understanding passed over Tony's face. Tim finally felt he'd broken through. God, Tony was stubborn, and Abby was right that he was a rock—but he was a rock wall that needed to be chipped away in order to get to him.

In that moment the senior field agent's shoulders eased and it was as if he finally came to accept that Ziva wasn't coming back, that he needed to move on with his life no matter how much it hurt. Tim wasn't stupid. He knew that Tony wasn't going to heal overnight, but at least he could go back to NCIS and report to Abby that he broken Tony out of his fog.

Maybe now he would come back into work. Vance was being awfully lenient with all of them, giving them some days to sort everything out before returning to work. Tim and Gibbs had not taken the days offered to them, but Tony had. It had surprised them both if they were honest.

"So. What are you going to tell Abby when you go back?"

"Oh, ah, that you just need some time…and space."

His lips pulled into a small grin. "Like Abby's going to listen to that. She'll be here tonight," Tony replied.

Tim winced. "Yeah. Probably. I'm really sorry, Tony."

"Don't be," Tony said, pulling himself from the sofa. "Gives me an excuse to finally clean the place up, maybe shave and take a shower."

"Maybe? You smell like you've been lost in the desert for weeks."

Tony lifted his tee shirt to his nose and sniffed. He made a vulgar face and agreed. "Yeah, maybe I'll shower first."

Tim felt some relief wash through him. "Want me to stay and help?" When Tony threw him a questionable look, he clarified, "I mean with the cleaning."

"Put the pizza boxes in the trash chute on your way out?"

"Sure."

Tony moved towards the bathroom but paused. Slowly he turned while Tim was gathering up the pizza boxes and bit down on his lower lip. "Probie."

Tim glanced up from his cleaning and looked at his partner expectantly.

"Thanks. For picking me up and dusting me off."

"No problem, Tony."

"You do realize that if you tell _anyone _about our little _heart to heart _here I will have Abby kill you without leaving forensic evidence?"

Tim couldn't help the goofy grin that plastered his face. It was great to have a semblance of the old Tony back. "Yeah. I know."

Tony grunted and disappeared into the bathroom. Tim gathered up the pizza boxes, left the apartment with the door slamming shut behind him and tossed the trash down the chute. On his way out of the building he shoved his hands into his pockets. He knew that Ziva leaving was going to linger with Tony for a long time but at least now he was moving beyond sitting on his sofa drinking the days away.

And that, he reasoned, was a the first step.


End file.
